La Belle Helene 3-7 March

I am currently scheduled to create the lighting design for four shows this year, all of which I have not worked on before, or even particularly know well, which should be an interesting challenge. They span everything from classical 19th Century opera to 1950s, 60s and 80s era musicals.

The first of them is Reading Operatic‘s production of Jacques Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène, a light-hearted comic opera set in Sparta before the Trojan war with a cast of mythical Greek heroes, among others. This show is in three acts and is packed with a lot of music, so am anticipating technical rehearsal time will be at a premium. On the other hand it should be a conventional rig with no complications, an easy way of getting started on 2009 shows after a brief break from the theatre.